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Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2023 10:01 am
by cheonice
Over the years we got more and more very powerful protection spells. It went a long way from
Dauntless Escort to staples like
Teferi's Protection. In your oppinion, what is the most powerful card? Which do you like playing? What would you consider a worthy budget alternative?
Teferi's Protection
Clever Concealment
Flawless Maneuver
Selfless Spirit
Guardian of Faith
Grand Crescendo
Akroma's Will
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2023 11:18 am
by Serenade
Heroic Intervention
Cosmic Intervention
Glorious Protector
Lae'zel's Acrobatics
Ghostway
Faith's Reward
Second Sunrise
What rank as the best wraths these days? Act, Rift, Deluge, Farewell, Eviction? Then I'd put the blink and phasing stuff as best.
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2023 2:31 pm
by pokken
Hour of revelation and cyclonic rift are the best two wipes imho with toxic deluge third
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2023 3:25 pm
by folding_music
I really adore
Lae'zel's Acrobatics and it is reassuringly expensive mana-wise so you don't feel like yr playing at an unfair power level
but mmm I think
Muddle the Mixture is my fave boardwipe-prevention spell lol
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 9:56 am
by cheonice
Good point, totally forgot about
Toxic Deluge et al. Feels strange to have a green spell mixed into all the white goodness.
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 10:34 am
by Mookie
Serenade wrote: ↑1 year ago
What rank as the best wraths these days? Act, Rift, Deluge, Farewell, Eviction? Then I'd put the blink and phasing stuff as best.
My
brief scryfall search puts the top 10 most-played board wipes (in order) as:
Looking at these, there is one bounce, one damage-based, one -X/-X, one exile, and six destroy effects. So, while granting indestructible doesn't stop everything, it does still stop the vast majority of board wipes. I'd also hypothesize that one of the reasons why Rift, Deluge, and Farewell are so high is
because they get around the most common protection. Sort of an arms race, really, between harder-to-prevent board wipes and harder-to-ignore protection. We'll see where things end up in a few years.
Back to the original topic, I don't think there is a single 'best' protection effect. Play whatever synergizes with your deck. If you're running creature recursion,
Selfless Spirit is awesome. If you're running blink synergies, then go for
Ghostway. If you're playing aristocrats and want your stuff to die, then embrace it and recur stuff with
Living Death. That said,
Flawless Maneuver and
Clever Concealment definitely get major bonus points due to being free to cast, particularly if your deck is tight on mana.
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 11:00 am
by Toshi
I will never understand why
Tragic Arrogance doesn't make these lists...
Thorough, doesn't care about indestructible, highly political and with the amount of artifact/enchantment creatures these days it gets extra gross.
Anyhow, for me
Clever Concealment and
Flawless Maneuver top the list by virtue of being virtually free. With
Clever Concealment phasing out it is by far my favorite one.
Teferi's Protection comes in third as it protects more than just creatures while costing mana (duh).
Grand Crescendo would be my fourth pick for its double utility.
Outside of those 3+ mana makes a lot of difference for the upper echelons of commander, so they are just as fine/unplayable and it only comes down to the deck type which one you run, as ETBs, tokens and others all have different angles and tech.
Creature based ones without flash don't really compare, as they end up being an extra layer for your opponents to work through instead of surprisingly one uping your opponents.
Adding to the list so far:
Eerie Interlude(!!!),
Golgari Charm,
Wrap in Vigor and
Semester's End, ...
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 4:23 pm
by PrimevalCommander
Akroma's Will is in my top 5 easily. This reads more as a win condition with protection backup, which has more value to me than a protection only card. Every time I have seen it cast, including when I do it, at least one player dies. I would like to have a couple more copies. Goes in most every white deck that gets into combat.
The blink options, both instant and creatures just seem to be a bit clunky in my experience. I don't have extensive experience with them, but the timing is more difficult to pull off than some of the others. If you are playing a blink deck, then obviously the value goes up, but I'm not playing any of them outside of that right now. I don't have
Clever Concealment or
Flawless Maneuver yet, but they are obviously good and I hope to have one or both very soon.
Top 5
Akroma's Will good wincon
Teferi's Protection most comprehensive protection
Clever Concealment Free
Heroic Intervention two stage protection
Flawless Maneuver Free
Guardian of Faith good with creature synergy
Grand Crescendo good with token synergy
Glorious Protector good with creature & blink synergy
Haven't tried these, but the read well.
Lae'zel's Acrobatics
Cosmic Intervention
Ghostway
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 5:05 pm
by pokken
Brought Back is usually good enough (keeping your best two permanents, and also acting as bad rampant growth sometimes)
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 6:02 pm
by Jemolk
I prefer mass recursion to protection, myself. Protection is only useful if you've currently got a fantastic board. Mass recursion is good if the aggregate of all your removed cards make a good board. Also people will see you as a bigger threat if they consistently find themselves unable to answer your board at all, than they will if they find that it's merely a setback -- at least if you ever become the imminent threat, they can set you back, after all. The only one of these protection spells I really like as a generic protection spell, then, is
Teferi's Protection, and that's because it also effectively says "I don't die, see you later" on it. I'm not fussed about mana costs; I generally play a fairly reactive game anyway, so I'd rather something that protects my face but costs mana as opposed to something that only protects my board but can be cast for free. Similar in a way to how my preferred answer to uncounterable spells that need to be removed while on the stack is
Time Stop and not
Mindbreak Trap -- Time Stop can stop more things, including combat if necessary.
I do play all the mass blink spells in 5c Allies, though -- and I mean
all the mass blink spells. Up to and including
Legion's Initiative. They just straight up kill people there.
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 6:15 pm
by Mookie
Toshi wrote: ↑1 year ago
I will never understand why Tragic Arrogance doesn't make these lists...
Thorough, doesn't care about indestructible, highly political and with the amount of artifact/enchantment creatures these days it gets extra gross.
Anecdotally, I put Tragic Arrogance in all my decks when it first came out... but I ended up cutting it from all of them. It's pretty easy to include
Wrath of God in a creature-light deck, since you get a relatively asymmetric effect. However, Tragic Arrogance wants to be in a deck that is also light on artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers, which is... somewhat less common, at least among my decks. It's a powerful effect, and getting to choose certainly helps, but every time I had to choose between sacrificing
Skullclamp and
Sol Ring made me sad. I actually wonder how much play
The Eternal Wanderer will see, since she provides a version of this effect that only hits creatures, and is thus a bit easier to fit into decks.
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 6:20 pm
by pokken
Arrogance is garbage. It is too likely to leave one person who is not you in pole position.
"Oh your only creature is consecrated sphinx, guess this wipe is dead."
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 7:24 pm
by illakunsaa
I think
March of Swirling Mist has potential to protect your own board.
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 8:02 pm
by duducrash
pokken wrote: ↑1 year ago
"Oh your only creature is consecrated sphinx, guess this wipe is dead."
It's like
Urza's Ruinous Blast . Great in theory and some scenarios, but plays out weirdly
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 9:19 pm
by Dunadain
Ill add
Guardian of Faith as putting it on a creature makes it easier to tutor/recur and opens up the ability to blink.
Oh yeah, and
Glorious Protector.
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 9:26 pm
by Dunadain
Mookie wrote: ↑1 year ago
Toshi wrote: ↑1 year ago
I will never understand why Tragic Arrogance doesn't make these lists...
Thorough, doesn't care about indestructible, highly political and with the amount of artifact/enchantment creatures these days it gets extra gross.
Anecdotally, I put Tragic Arrogance in all my decks when it first came out... but I ended up cutting it from all of them. It's pretty easy to include
Wrath of God in a creature-light deck, since you get a relatively asymmetric effect. However, Tragic Arrogance wants to be in a deck that is also light on artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers, which is... somewhat less common, at least among my decks. It's a powerful effect, and getting to choose certainly helps, but every time I had to choose between sacrificing
Skullclamp and
Sol Ring made me sad. I actually wonder how much play
The Eternal Wanderer will see, since she provides a version of this effect that only hits creatures, and is thus a bit easier to fit into decks.
I've never liked tragic arrogance, but the new wanderer has been amazing so far. I think it's an unfair comparison though because wanderer also is a value generating permanent after the wipe.
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2023 2:21 am
by Dunharrow
I have really warmed up to Ghostway and Eerie Interlude lately. TP is probably still the best, but I like how Ghostway and EI can be used proactively when needed. Sure, saving your board from a wrath is amazing.
Also amazing is blinking 3 ETB creatures and getting a huge tempo swing.
Re: Discussion: Instants that protect your board
Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2023 4:28 pm
by Avacyn Believer
Thinking about this question made me realize that I don't really play board-protection spells. I think its because I play Voltron the most, so I care more about protecting one creature than the whole board. Only my token deck is where I look at the whole board, and I play the already mentioned Dauntless Escort and Selfless Spirit. In addition to
Make a Stand, and
Rootborn Defenses.
Shalai, Voice of Plenty fits that category too, kind of. But those are all deck-specific.
As for what it best, you can't beat
Teferi's Protection, and
Flawless Maneuver is useful to cast for free. The only reason I don't put those into every deck with
is because I only have so many copies of those cards. For budget versions, I'd be looking more at what synergizes with the deck than what is generically good.